Mirror Dance

Chapter Twenty-Three

The re-discovery of sex fairly immobilized him for the next three days, but his instinct for escape surfaced one afternoon when Rowan left him sleeping, but he wasn’t. He unlidded his eyes, and traced the pattern of scars on his chest, and thought it over. Out was clearly a wrong direction. In was one he hadn’t tried yet. Everybody here seemed to go to Lilly with their problems. Very well. He would go to Lilly too.

Up, or down? As a Jacksonian leader, she ought traditionally to lodge in either a penthouse or a bunker. Baron Ryoval lived in a bunker, or at least there was a dim image in his head associated with that name, involving shadowy sub-basements. Baron Fell took the penthouse at apogee, looking down on it all from his orbital station. He seemed to have a lot of pictures in his head of Jackson’s Whole. Was it his home? The thought confused him. Up. Up and in.

He dressed in his grey knits, borrowed some of Rowan’s socks, and slipped into the corridor. He found a lift tube and took it to the top floor, just one above Rowan’s. It was another floor of residence suites. At its center he found another lift tube, palm-locked. Any Durona could use it. A spiral staircase wound around it. He climbed the stairs very slowly, and waited, near the top, till he had all his breath back. He knocked on the door.

It slid aside, and a slim Eurasian boy of about ten regarded him gravely. “What do you want?” The boy frowned.

“I want to see your … grandmother.”

“Bring him in, Robin,” a soft voice called.

The boy ducked his head, and motioned him inside. His sock feet trod noiselessly across a deep carpet. The windows were polarized against the dark grey afternoon, and pools of warmer, yellower lamplight fought the gloom. Beyond the window, the force field revealed itself with tiny scintillations, as water droplets or particulars matter were detected and repelled or annihilated.

A shrunken woman sat in a wide chair, and watched him approach her through dark eyes set in a face of old ivory. She wore a high-necked black silk tunic and loose trousers. Her hair was pure white, and very long; a slim girl, most literally twin to the boy, was brushing it over the back of the chair, in long, long strokes. The room was very warm. Regarding her regarding him, he wondered how he could ever have thought that worried old woman with the cane might be Lilly. Hundred-year-old eyes looked at you differently.

“Ma’am,” he said. His mouth felt suddenly dry.

“Sit down,” she nodded to a short sofa set around the corner of the low table in front of her. “Violet, dear,” a thin hand, all white wrinkles and blue ropy veins, touched the girl’s hand which had paused protectively on her black silk shoulder. “Bring tea now. Three cups. Robin, please go downstairs and get Rowan.”

The girl arranged the hair in a falling fan around the woman’s upright torso, and the two children vanished in un-childlike silence. Clearly, the Durona Group did not employ outsiders. No chance of a mole ever penetrating their organization. With equal obedience, he sank into the seat she’d indicated.

Her vowels had a vibrato of age, but her diction, containing them, was perfect. “Have you come to yourself, sir?” she inquired.

“No, ma’am,” he said sadly. “Only to you.” He thought carefully about how to phrase his question. Lilly would not be any less medically careful than Rowan about yielding him clues. “Why can’t you identify me?”

Her white brows rose. “Well put. You are ready for an answer, I think. Ah.”

The lift tube hummed, and Rowan’s alarmed face appeared. She hurried out. “Lilly, I’m sorry. I thought he was asleep—”

“It’s all right, child. Sit down. Pour the tea,” for Violet reappeared around the corner bearing a large tray. Lilly whispered to the girl behind a faintly trembling hand, and she nodded and scampered off. Rowan knelt in what appeared to be a precise old ritual—had she once held Violet’s place? he rather thought so—and poured green tea into thin white cups, and handed it round. She sat at Lilly’s knees, and stole a brief, reassuring touch of the white hair coiled there.

The tea was very hot. Since he’d lately taken a deep dislike to cold, this pleased him, and he sipped carefully. “Answers, ma’am?” he reminded her cautiously.

Rowan’s lips parted in a negative, alarmed breath; Lilly crooked up one finger, and quelled her.

“Background,” said the old woman. “I believe the time has come to tell you a story.”

He nodded, and settled back with his tea.

“Once upon a time,” she smiled briefly, “there were three brothers. A proper fairy tale, ai? The eldest and original, and two young clones. The eldest—as happens in these tales—was born to a magnificent patrimony. Title—wealth—comfort—his father, if not exactly a king, commanded more power than any king in pre-Jump history. And thus he became the target of many enemies. Since he was known to dote upon his son, it occurred to more than one of his enemies to try and strike at him through his only child. Hence this peculiar multiplication.” She nodded at him. It made his belly shiver. He sipped more tea, to cover his confusion.

She paused. “Can you name any names yet?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Mm.” She abandoned the fairy tale; her voice grew more clipped. “Lord Miles Vorkosigan of Barrayar was the original. He is now about twenty-eight standard years old. His first clone was made right here on Jackson’s Whole, twenty-two years ago, a purchase by a Komarran resistance group from House Bharaputra. We do not know what this clone names himself, but the Komarrans’ elaborate substitution plot failed about two years ago, and the clone escaped.”

“Galen,” he whispered.

She glanced sharply at him. “He was the chief of those Komarrans, yes. The second clone … is a puzzle. The best guess is that he was manufactured by the Cetagandans, but no one knows. He first appeared about ten years ago as a full-blown and exceptionally brilliant mercenary commander, claiming the quite legal Betan name of Miles Naismith, in his maternal line. He has shown himself no friend to the Cetagandans, so the theory that he is a Cetagandan renegade has a certain compelling logic. No one knows his age, though obviously he can be no more than twenty-eight.” She took a sip of her tea. “It is our belief that you are one of those two clones.”

“Shipped to you like a crate of frozen meat? With my chest blown out?”

“Yes.”

“So what? Clones—even frozen ones—can’t be a novelty here.” He glanced at Rowan.

“Let me go on. About three months ago, Bharaputra’s manufactured clone returned home—with a crew of mercenary soldiers at his back that he had apparently stolen from the Dendarii Fleet by the simple expedient of pretending to be his clone-twin, Admiral Naismith. He attacked Bharaputra’s clone-creche in an attempt to either steal, or possibly free, a group of clones slated to be the bodies for brain transplants, a business which I personally loathe.”

He touched his chest. “He … failed?”

“No. But Admiral Naismith followed in hot pursuit of his stolen hip and troops. In the melee that ensued downside at Bharaputra’s main surgical facilities, one of the two was killed. The other escaped, along with the mercenaries and most of Bharaputra’s very valuable clone-cattle. They made a fool of Vasa Luigi—I laughed myself sick when I first heard about it.” She sipped tea demurely.

He could actually almost picture her doing so, though it made his eyes cross slightly.

“Before they jumped, the Dendarii Mercenaries posted a reward for the return of a cryo-chamber containing the remains of a man they claim to have been the Bharaputran-made clone.”

His eyes widened. “Me?”

She held up a hand. “Vasa Luigi, Baron Bharaputra, is absolutely convinced that they were lying, and that the man in the box was really their Admiral Naismith.”

“Me?” he said less certainly.

“Georish Stauber, Baron Fell, refuses to even guess. And Baron Ryoval would tear a town apart for even a fifty percent chance of laying hands on Admiral Naismith, who injured him four years ago as no one has in a century.” Her lips curved in a scalpel-smile.

It all made sense, which made no sense at all. It was like a story heard long ago, in childhood, and re-encountered. In another lifetime. Familiarity under glass. He touched his head, which ached. Rowan matched the gesture with concern.

“Don’t you have medical records? Something?”

“At some risk, we obtained the developmental records of Bharaputra’s clone. Unfortunately, they only go up to age fourteen. We have nothing on Admiral Naismith. Alas, one cannot run a triangulation on one data point.”

He turned toward Rowan. “You know me, inside and out. Can’t you tell?”

“You’re strange.” Rowan shook her head. “Half your bones are plastic replacement parts, do you know? The real ones that are left show old breaks, old traumas. … I’d guess you not only older than Bharaputra’s clone ought to be, I’d guess you older than the original Lord Vorkosigan, and that makes no sense. If we could just get one solid, certain clue. The memories you’ve reported so far are terribly ambiguous. You know weapons, as the Admiral might—but Bharaputra’s clone was trained as an assassin. You remember Ser Galen, and only Bharaputra’s clone should do that. I found out about those sugar trees. They’re called maple trees, and they originate on Earth—where Bharaputra’s clone was taken for training. And so on.” She flung up her hands in frustration.

“If you’re not getting the right answer,” he said slowly, “maybe you’re not asking the right question.”

“So what is the right question?”

He shook his head, mutely. “Why …” His hands spread. “Why not turn my frozen body over to the Dendarii and collect the reward? Why not sell me to Baron Ryoval, if he wants me so much? Why revive me?”

“I wouldn’t sell a laboratory rat to Baron Ryoval,” Lilly stated flatly. She twitched a brief smile. “Old business, between us.”

How old? Older than he, whoever he was.

“As for the Dendarii—we may deal with them yet. Depending on who you are.”

They were approaching the heart of the matter; he could sense it. “Yes?”

“Four years ago, Admiral Naismith visited Jackson’s Whole, and besides counting a most spectacular coup on Ry Ryoval, left with a certain Dr. Hugh Canaba, one of Bharaputra’s top genetics people. Now, I knew Canaba. More to the point, I know what Vasa Luigi and Lotus paid to get him here, and how many House secrets he was privy to. They would never have let him go alive. Yet he’s gone, and no one on Jackson’s Whole has ever been able to trace him.”

She leaned forward intently. “Assuming Canaba was not just disposed of out an airlock—Admiral Naismith has shown he can get people out. In fact, it’s a speciality he’s famous for. That is our interest in him.”

“You want off-planet?” He glanced around at Lilly Durona’s comfortable, self-contained little empire. “Why?”

“I have a Deal with Georish Stauber—Baron Fell. It’s a very old Deal, as we are very old dealers. My time is surely running out, and Georish is growing,” she grimaced, “unreliable. If I die—or if he dies—or if he succeeds in having his brain transplanted to a younger body, as he has attempted at least once to arrange—our old Deal will be broken. The Durona Group might be offered less admirable deals than the one we have enjoyed so long with House Fell. It might be broken up—sold—weakened so as to invite attack from old enemies like Ry, who remembers an insult or an injury forever. It might be forced to work it does not choose. I’ve been looking for a way out for the last couple of years. Admiral Naismith knows one.”

She wanted him to be Admiral Naismith, obviously the most valuable of the two clones. “What if I’m the other one?” He stared at his hands. They were just his hands. No hints there.

“You might be ransomed.”

By whom? Was’he savior, or commodity? What a choice. Rowan looked uneasy.

“What am I to you if I can’t remember who I am?”

“No one at all, little man.” Her dark eyes glinted, momentarily, like obsidian chips.

This woman had survived nearly a century on Jackson’s Whole. It would not do to underestimate her ruthlessness on the basis of one picky prejudice about clone-brain transplants.

They finished their tea, and retreated to Rowan’s room.

“What in all that seemed familiar to you?” Rowan asked him anxiously when they were alone on her little sofa.

“All of it,” he said, in deep perplexity. “And yet—Lilly seems to think I can spirit you all away like some kind of magician. But even f I am Admiral Naismith, I can’t remember how I did it!”

“Sh,” she tried to calm him. “You’re ripe for memory-cascade, I swear. I can almost see it starting. Your speech has improved vastly in just the last few days.”

“All that therapeutic kissing,” he smiled, a suggestive compliment :hat won him, as he’d hoped, some more therapy. But when he came up for air he said, “It won’t come back to me if I’m the other one. I remember Galen. Earth. A house in London … what’s the clone’s name?”

“We don’t know,” she said, and at his exasperated grasp of her bands added, “No, we really don’t.”

“Admiral Naismith … shouldn’t be Miles Naismith. He should be Mark Pierre Vorkosigan.” How the hell did he know that? Mark Pierre. Piotr Pierre. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and wouldn’t keep her, a taunt from out of a crowd that had put an old man into a terrifying murderous rage, he’d had to be restrained by— the image escaped him. Gran’da? “If the Bharaputra-made clone is the third son, he could be named anything.” Something wasn’t right.

He tried to imagine Admiral Naismith’s childhood as a Cetagandan secret covert ops project. His childhood? It must have been extraordinary, if he’d not only escaped at the age of eighteen or less, but invaded Cetagandan Intelligence and established his fortune within a year. But he could think of nothing from such a youth. A complete blank.

“What are you going to do with me if I’m not Naismith? Keep me is a pet? For how long?”

Rowan pursed her lips in worry. “If you are the Bharaputran-made clone—you’re going to need to get off Jackson’s Whole yourself. The Dendarii raid made an awful mess out of Vasa Luigi’s headquarters. He has blood to avenge, as well as property. And pride. If it’s the case—I’ll try to get you out.”

“You? Or you all?”

“I’ve never gone against the group.” She rose, and paced across her sitting room. “Yet I lived a year, on Escobar, alone, when I was taking my cryo-revival training. I’ve often wondered … what it would be like to be half of a couple. Instead of one-fortieth of a group. Would I feel bigger?”

“Were you bigger when you were all of one, on Escobar?”

“I don’t know. It’s a silly conceit. Still—one can’t help thinking of Lotus.”

“Lotus. Baronne Bharaputra? The one who left your group?”

“Yes. Lilly’s oldest daughter after Rose. Lilly says … if we don’t hang together, we’ll all hang separately. It’s a reference to an ancient method of execution that—”

“I know what hanging is,” he said hastily, before she could go into the medical details.

Rowan stared out her window. “Jackson’s Whole is no place to be alone. You can’t trust anybody.”

“An interesting paradox. Makes for quite a dilemma.”

She searched his face for irony, found it, and frowned. “It’s no joke.”

Indeed. Even Lilly Durona’s self-referential maternal strategy hadn’t quite solved the problem, as Lotus had proved.

He eyed her. “Were you ordered to sleep with me?” he asked suddenly.

She flinched. “No.” She paced again. “But I did ask permission. Lilly said to go ahead, it might help attach you to our interests.” She paused. “Does that seem terribly cold, to you?”

“On Jackson’s Whole—merely prudent.” And attachments surely ran two ways. Jackson’s Whole was no place to be alone. But you can’t trust anyone.

If anyone was sane here, he swore it was by accident.

Reading, an exercise that had at first given him a stabbing sensation in the eyes and instant excruciating headaches, was getting easier. He could go for up to ten minutes at a time now before it became too blinding to bear. Holed up in Rowan’s study, he pushed himself to the limits of pain, an information-bite, a few minutes’ rest, and try again. Beginning at the center outward, he read up first on Jackson’s Whole, its unique history, non-governmental structure, and the one hundred and sixteen Great Houses and countless Houses Minor, with their interlocking alliances and vendettas, roiling deals and betrayals. The Durona Group was well on its way to growing into a House Minor in its own right, he judged, budding from House Fell like a hydra, also like a hydra reproducing asexually. Mentions of Houses Bharaputra, Hargraves, Dyne, Ryoval and Fell triggered images in his head that did not come from the vid display. A few of them were even starting to cross-connect. Too few. He wondered if it was significant that the Houses that seemed most familiar were also the ones most famous for dealing in off-planet illegalities.

Whoever I am, I know this place. And yet … his visions tasted small in scope, too shallow to represent a formative lifetime. Maybe he’d been a small person. Still, it was more than he could dredge up from his subconscious regarding the youth of the putative Admiral Naismith, the Cetagandan-produced clone.

Gran’da. Those had been memories with mass, an almost stunning sensory weight. Who was Gran’da? Jacksonian fosterer? Komarran mentor? Cetagandan trainer? Someone huge and fascinating, mysterious and old and dangerous. Gran’da had no source, he seemed to come with the universe.

Sources. Perhaps a study of his progenitor, the crippled Barrayaran lordling Vorkosigan, might yield up something. He’d been made in Vorkosigan’s image, after all, which was a hell of a thing to do to any poor sod. He pulled up a listing of references to Barrayar from Rowan’s comconsole library. There were some hundreds of non-fiction books, vids, documents and documentaries. For the sake of a frame, he began with a general history, scanning rapidly. The Fifty-thousand Firsters. Wormhole collapse. The Time of Isolation, the Bloody Centuries … the Re-discovery … the words blurred. His head felt full to bursting. Familiar, so achingly familiar … he had to stop.

Panting, he darkened the room and lay down on the little sofa till his eyes stopped throbbing. But then, if he’d ever been trained to replace Vorkosigan, it all ought to be very familiar indeed. He’d have had to study Barrayar forward and backward. I have. He wanted to beg Rowan to shackle him to a wall and give him another dose of fast-penta, regardless of what it did to his blood pressure. The stuff had almost worked. Maybe another try …

The door hissed. “Hello?” The lights came up. Rowan stood in the doorway. “Are you all right?”

“Headache. Reading.”

“You shouldn’t try to …”

Take it so fast, he supplied silently, Rowan’s constant refrain of the last few days, since his interview with Lilly. But this time, she cut herself off. He pushed up; she came and sat by him. “Lilly wants me to bring you upstairs.”

“All right—” He made to rise, but she stopped him.

She kissed him. It was a long, long kiss, which at first delighted and then worried him. He broke away to ask, “Rowan, what’s the matter?”

“… I think I love you.”

“This is a problem?”

“Only my problem.” She managed a brief, unhappy smile. “I’ll handle it.”

He captured her hands, traced tendon and vein. She had brilliant hands. He did not know what to say.

She drew him to his feet. “Come on.” They held hands all the way to the entrance to the penthouse lift-tube. When she disengaged to press the palm lock, she did not take his hand again. They rose together, and exited around the chromium railing into Lilly’s living room.

Lilly sat upright and formal in her wide padded chair, her white hair braided today in a single thick rope that wound down over her shoulder to her lap. She was attended by Hawk, who stood silently behind her and to her right. Not an attendant. A guard. Three strangers dressed in grey quasi-military uniforms with white trim were ranged around her, two women seated and a man standing. One of the women had dark curls, and brown eyes that turned on him with a gaze that scorched him. The other, older woman had short light-brown hair barely touched with grey. But it was the man who riveted him.

My God. It’s the other me.

Or … not-me. They stood eye to eye. This one was painfully neat, boots clean, uniform pressed and formal, his mere appearance a salute to Lilly. Insignia glinted on his collar. Admiral … Naismith? Naismith was the name stitched over the left breast of his officer’s pocketed undress jacket. A sharp intake of breath, an electric snap of the grey eyes, and a half-suppressed smile made the short man’s face wonderfully alive. But if he was a bony shadow of himself, this one was him doubled. Stocky, squared-off, muscular and intense, heavy-jowled and with a notable gut. He looked like a senior officer, body-mass balanced over stout legs spread in an aggressive parade rest like an overweight bulldog. So this was Naismith, the famous rescuer so desired by Lilly. He could believe it.

His utter fascination with his clone-twin was penetrated by a growing, dreadful realization. I’m the wrong one. Lilly had just spent a fortune reviving the wrong clone. How angry was she going to be? For a Jacksonian leader, such a vast mistake must feel like counting coup on yourself. Indeed, Lilly’s face was set and stern, as she glanced toward Rowan.

“It’s him, all right,” breathed the woman with the burning eyes. Her hands were clenched in tight fists, in her lap.

“Do I … know you, ma’am?” he said politely, carefully. Her torch-like heat perturbed him. Half-consciously, he moved closer to Rowan.

Her expression was like marble. Only a slight widening of her eyes, like a woman drilled neatly through the solar plexus by a laser beam, revealed a depth of … what feeling? Love, hate? Tension … His headache worsened.

“As you see,” said Lilly. “Alive and well. Let us return to the discussion of the price.” The round table was littered with cups and crumbs—how long had this conference been going on?

“Whatever you want,” said Admiral Naismith, breathing heavily. “We pay and go.”

“Any price within reason.” The brown-haired older woman gave her commander an oddly quelling look. “We came for a man, not an animated body. A botched revival suggests a discount for damaged goods, to my mind.” That voice, that ironic alto voice … I know you.

“His revival is not botched,” said Rowan sharply. “If there was a problem, it was in the prep—”

The hot woman jerked, and frowned fiercely.

“—but in fact, he’s making a good recovery. Measurable progress every day. It’s just too soon. You’re pushing too hard.” A glance at Lilly? “The stress and pressure slow down the very results they seek to hurry. He pushes himself too hard, he winds himself in knots so that—”

Lilly held up a placating hand. “So speaks my cryo-revival specialist,” she said to the Admiral. “Your clone-brother is in a recovering state, and may be expected to improve. If that is in fact what you desire.”

Rowan bit her lip. The hot woman chewed on her fingertip.

“Now we come to what I desire,” Lilly continued. “And, you may be pleased to learn, it isn’t money. Let us discuss a little recent history. Recent in my view, that is.”

Admiral Naismith glanced out the big square windows, framing another dark Jacksonian winter afternoon, with low scudding clouds starting to spit snow. The force screen sparkled, silently eating the ice spicules. “Recent history is much on my mind, ma’am,” he said to Lilly. “If you know it, you know why I don’t wish to linger here. Get to your point.”

Not nearly oblique enough for Jacksonian business etiquette, but Lilly nodded. “How is Dr. Canaba these days, Admiral?”

“What?”

Succinctly, for a Jacksonian, Lilly again described her interest in the fate of the absconded geneticist. “Yours is the organization that made Hugh Canaba completely disappear. Yours is the organization that lifted ten thousand Marilacan prisoners of war from under the noses of their Cetagandan captors on Dagoola Four, though I admit they have spectacularly not-disappeared. Somewhere between those two proven extremes lies the fate of my little family. You will pardon my tiny joke if I say you appear to me to be just what the doctor ordered.”

Naismith’s eyes widened; he rubbed his face, sucked air through his teeth, and managed a strained-looking grin. “I see. Ma’am. Well. In fact, such a project as you suggest might be quite negotiable, particularly if you think you might like to join Dr. Canaba. I’m not prepared to pull it out of my pockets this afternoon, you understand—”

Lilly nodded.

“But as soon as I make contact with my back-up, I think something might be arranged.”

“Then as soon as you make contact with your back-up, return to us, Admiral, and your clone-twin will be made available to you.”

“No—!” began the hot woman, half-rising; her comrade caught her arm and shook her head, and she sank back into her seat. “Right, Bel,” she muttered.

“We’d hoped to take him today,” said the mercenary, glancing at him. Their eyes intersected joltingly. The Admiral looked away, as if guarding himself from some too-intense stimulus.

“But as you can see, that would strip me of what seems to be my main bargaining chip,” Lilly murmured. “And the usual arrangement of half in advance and half on delivery is obviously impractical. Perhaps a modest monetary retainer would reassure you.”

“They seem to have taken good care of him so far,” said the brown-haired officer in an uncertain voice.

“But it would also,” the Admiral frowned, “give you an opportunity to auction him to other interested parties. I would caution you against starting a bidding war in this matter, ma’am. It could become the real thing.”

“Your interests are protected by your uniqueness, Admiral. No one else on Jackson’s Whole has what I want. You do. And, I think, vice versa. We are very well suited to deal.”

For a Jacksonian, this was bending over backward to encourage. Take it, close the deal! he thought, then wondered why. What did these people want him for? Outside, a gust of wind whipped the snowfall to a blinding, whirling curtain. It ticked on the windows.

It ticked on the windows… .

Lilly was the next to be aware, her dark eyes widening. No one else had noticed yet, the cessation of that silent glitter. Her startled gaze met his, as his head turned back from his first stare outward, and her lips parted for speech.

The window burst inward.

It was a safety-glass; instead of slicing shards, they were all bombarded by a hail of hot pellets. The two mercenary women shot to their feet, Lilly cried out, and Hawk leaped in front of her, a stunner appearing in his hand. Some kind of big aircar was hovering at the window: one, two … three, four huge troopers leaped through.

Transparent biotainer gear covered nerve-disruptor shield-suits; their faces were fully hooded and goggled. Hawk’s repeated stunner fire crackled harmlessly over them.

You’d get farther if you threw the damned stunner at them! He looked around wildly for a projectile weapon, knife, chair, table-leg, anything to attack with. Over one of the mercenary women’s pocket comm links a tinny voice was crying, “Quinn, this is Elena. Something just dropped the building’s force screen. I’m reading energy discharges—what the hell is going on in there? You want back-up?”

“Yes!” screamed the hot woman, rolling aside from a stunner beam, which followed her, crackling, across the carpet. Stunner-tag. The assault was a snatch, not an assassination, then. Hawk finally recovered the wit to pick up the round table and swing with it. He hit one trooper but was stunner-dropped by another. Lilly stood utterly still, watching grimly. A gust of cold wind fluttered her silk pant legs. Nobody aimed at her.

“Which one’s Naismith?” boomed an amplified voice from one of the biotainered troopers. The Dendarii must have disarmed for the parley; the brown-haired mere closed hand-to-hand on an intruder. Not an option open to him. He grabbed Rowan’s hand and dodged behind a chair, trying to get a clear run toward the exit tube.

“Take ’em both,” the leader shouted over the din. A trooper leaped toward the lift tube to cut them off; the rectangular facet of his stunner discharger winked in the light as he found near-point-blank aim.

“Like hell!” yelled the Admiral, cannoning into the trooper. The trooper stumbled and his aim went wild. The last thing he saw as he and Rowan dove for the lift tube was a stunner beam from the leader taking Naismith in the head. Both the other Dendarii were down.

They descended with agonizing slowness. If he and Rowan could get to the force screen generator, could they get it turned back on and trap the attackers inside? Stunner fire sizzled after them, starry bursts on the walls. They twisted in air, somehow landed on their feet, and stumbled backward into the corridor. No time to explain—he grabbed Rowan’s hand and slapped it flat to the Durona-keyed lock-pad, and hit the power-off square with his elbow. The trooper pursuing them yelped and fell three meters, not quite head-first.

He winced at the thud, and towed Rowan down the corridor. “Where are the generators?” he yelled over his shoulder at her. Other Duronas, alarmed, were appearing from all directions. A pair of green-clad Fell guards burst into the corridor’s far end and pelted toward the penthouse lift-tube. But what side were they on? He pulled Rowan into the nearest open doorway.

“Lock it!” he gasped. She keyed the door shut. They were in some Durona’s residence suite. A cul-de-sac made a poor bolt-hole, but help seemed to be on the way. He just wasn’t sure for whom. Something just dropped your force screen… . From the inside. It could only have been dropped from the inside. He half-bent, mouth wide for air, lungs on fire, heart racing and chest aching, a dizzy darkness clouding his vision. He stumbled to the dangerous window anyway, trying to get a handle on the tactical situation. Muffled shouts and thumps penetrated from the wall by the corridor.

“How t’hell’d those bastards get your screen down?” he wheezed to Rowan, clutching the windowsill. “Didn’t hear an explosion—traitor?”

“I don’t know,” Rowan replied anxiously. “That’s outer-perimeter security. Fell’s men are supposed to be in charge of it.”

He stared out over the icy parking lot of the compound. A couple more green-clad men were running across it, shouting, pointing upward, taking cover behind a parked vehicle, and struggling to get a projectile-weapon aimed. Another guard made urgent negative gestures at them; a miss could take out the penthouse and everyone in it. They nodded and waited.

He craned his neck, face to the glass, trying to see upward and to the left. The armored aircar loomed, still hovering at the penthouse window.

The assailants were withdrawing already. Damn! No chance with the force-screen. I’m too slow. The aircar rocked as the troopers hastily re-boarded. Hands flashed, and a thick little grey-clad figure was dragged across the gap, six heart-stopping flights above the concrete. A limp trooper was dragged across too. They were leaving no wounded for questioning. Rowan, teeth clenched, pulled him back. “Get out of the line of fire!”

He resisted her. “They’re getting away!” he protested. “We should fight them now, on our own turf—”

Another aircar rose from the street, beyond the old and obsolete compound wall. A small civilian model, unarmed and unarmored, it fought for altitude. Through its canopy he could see a blurred grey-clad figure at the controls, a white flash of teeth set in a grimace. The assailants’ armored car yawed away from the window. The Dendarii aircar tried to ram it, to force it down. Sparks sprayed, plastic cracked, and metal screeched, but the armored car shook it off; it pinwheeled to the pavement and landed with a terminal crunch.

“Rented, I bet,” he groaned, watching. “Gonna have to pay for it. Good try, it almost worked—Rowan! Are any of those aircars down there yours?”

“You mean the group’s? Yes, but—”

“Come on. We’ve got to get down there.” But the building was crawling with security by now. They’d be nailing everyone to the wall till identified and cleared. He could scarcely leap out the window and fly down the five flights, though he longed to. Oh, for a cloak of invisibility.

Oh. Yes!

“Carry me! Can you carry me?”

“I suppose, but—”

He raced to the door, and fell backwards into her arms as it opened again.

“Why?” she asked.

“Do it, do it, do it!” he hissed through his teeth. She dragged him sack out into the corridor. He studied the chaos through slitted eyes, gasping realistically. Assorted agitated Duronas milled behind a cordon of Fell security now blocking the entry to the penthouse. “Get Dr. Chrys to take my feet,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

Temporarily too overwhelmed to argue, Rowan cried, “Chrys, help me! We have to get him downstairs.”

“Oh—” Given the impression that this was some kind of medical emergency, Dr. Chrys asked no questions. She grabbed his ankles, and within seconds they were forcing their way through the mob. Two Doctors Durona carrying a white-faced, injured-looking fellow at a run—green-clad armed men stepped hastily aside and waved them on.

As they reached the ground floor Chris tried to gallop toward the clinic area. For a moment he was yanked two ways, then he freed his feet from the astonished Dr. Chrys, and pulled away from Rowan. She gave chase, and they arrived at the outer door together.

The guards’ attention was focused on the efforts of the two men with the projectile launcher; his eyes followed their aim to the shadowy form of their retreating target, being swallowed by the snowy clouds. No, no, don’t shoot … ! The launcher burped; the bright explosion rocked the car but did not bring it down.

“Take me to the biggest, fastest thing you can make go,” he gasped to Rowan. “We can’t let them get away.” We can’t let Fell’s men blow it up, either. “Hurry!”

“Why?”

“Those goons just kidnapped my, my … brother,” he panted. ’Gotta follow. Bring ’em down if we can, follow if we can’t. The Dendarii must have reinforcements of some kind, if we don’t lose :hem. Or Fell. Lilly’s his, his liegewoman, isn’t she? He has to respond. Or someone does.” He was shivering violently. “Lose ’em and we’ll never get ’em back. They’re figuring on it.”

“What the hell would we do if we caught them?” Rowan objected. ’They just tried to kidnap you, and you want to run after them? That’s i job for security!”

“I am—I am …” What? What am I? His frustrated stutters segued into a confetti-scramble of perception. No, not again—

His vision cleared with the hiss of a hypospray, biting cold on his arm. Dr. Chrys was supporting him, and Rowan had one thumb pressed against his eyelid, holding it up while she stared into his eye, while her other hand slipped the hypospray back into her pocket. A kind of glassy bemusement descended upon him, as if he were wrapped in cellophane. “That should help,” said Rowan.

“No, it doesn’t,” he complained, or tried to. His words came out a mumble.

They had dragged him out of the lobby, out of sight near one of the lift tubes to the underground part of the clinic. He had only lost moments to the convulsion, then. There was still a chance—he struggled in Chrys’s grip, which tightened.

The snap of women’s steps, not a guard’s boots, rounded the corner. Lilly appeared, her face set and her nostrils flaring, flanked by Dr. Poppy.

“Rowan. Get him out of here,” Lilly said, in a voice dead-level in tone despite its breathlessness. “Georish will be downside himself to investigate this one. He has to never have been here. Our attackers seem to have been one of Naismith’s enemies. The story will be that the Dendarii came here looking for Naismith’s clone, but didn’t find him. Chrys, get rid of the physical evidence in Rowan’s room, and hide those files. Go!”

Chrys nodded and ran. Rowan took over holding him on his feet. He had an odd tendency to slump, as if he were melting. He blinked against the drug. No, we have to go after—

Lilly tossed Rowan a credit chit, and Dr. Poppy handed her a couple of coats and a medical bag. “Take him out the back door and disappear. Use the evacuation codes. Pick a place at random and go to ground, not one of our properties. Report in on a secured line from a separate location. By then I should know what I can salvage from this mess.” Her wrinkled lips peeled back on ivory teeth set in anger. “Move, girl.”

Rowan nodded obediently, and didn’t argue at all, he noticed indignantly. Holding him firmly by the arm, she guided his stumbling feet down a freight lift-tube, through the sub-basement, and into the underground clinic. A concealed doorway on its second level opened onto a narrow tunnel. He felt like a rat scurrying through a maze. Rowan stopped three times to key through some security device.

They came out in some other building’s under-level, and the door disappeared behind them, indistinguishable from the wall. They continued on through ordinary utility tunnels. “You use this route often?” he panted.

“No. But every once in a while we want to get something in or out not recorded by our gate guards, who are Baron Fell’s men.”

They emerged finally in a small underground parking garage. She led him to a little blue lightflyer, elderly and inconspicuous, and bundled him into the passenger seat. “This isn’ righ’,” he complained, thick-tongued. “Admiral Naismith—someone should go after Admiral Naismith.”

“Naismith owns a whole mercenary fleet.” Rowan strapped herself into the pilot’s seat. “Let them tangle with his enemies. Try to calm down and catch your breath. I don’t want to have to dose you again.”

The flyer rose into the swirling snow and rocked uncertainly in the gusts. The city sprawling below them disappeared quickly into the murk as Rowan powered them up. She glanced aside at his agitated profile. “Lilly will do something,” she reassured him. “She wants Naismith too.”

“It’s wrong,” he muttered. “It’s all wrong.” He huddled in the jacket Rowan had wrapped around him. She turned up the heat.

I’m the wrong one. It seemed he had no intrinsic value but his mysterious hold on Admiral Naismith. And if Admiral Naismith was removed from the Deal, the only person still interested in him would be Vasa Luigi, wanting vengeance upon him for crimes he couldn’t even remember committing. Worthless, unwanted, lonely and scared … His stomach churned in pain, and his head throbbed. His muscles ached, tense as wire.

All he had was Rowan. And, apparently, the Admiral, who had come searching for him. Who had very possibly risked his life to recover him. Why? I have to do … something.

“The Dendarii Mercenaries. Are they all here? Does the Admiral have ships in orbit, or what? How much back-up does he have? He said it would take time for him to contact his back-up. How much time? Where did the Dendarii come in from, a commercial shuttleport? Can they call down air support? How many—how much— where—” His brain tried madly to assemble data that wasn’t there into patterns for attack.

“Relax!” Rowan begged. “There’s nothing we can do. We’re only little people. And you’re in no condition. You’ll drive yourself into another convulsion if you keep on like this.”

“Screw my condition! I have to—I have to—”

Rowan raised wry eyebrows. He lay back in his seat with a sick sigh, drained. I should have been able to do this … to do something… . He listened to nothing, half-hypnotized by the sound of his own shallow breathing. Defeated. Again. He didn’t like the taste. He brooded at his pale and distorted reflection on the inside of the canopy. Time seemed to have become viscous.

The lights on the control panel died. They were suddenly weightless. His seat straps bit him. Fog began to stream up around them, faster and faster.

Rowan screamed, fought and banged the control panel. It flickered; momentarily, they had thrust again. Then lost it again. They descended in stutters. “What’s wrong with it, damn it!” Rowan cried.

He looked upward. Nothing but icy fog—they dropped below cloud level. Then above them, a dark shape loomed. Big lift van, heavy… .

“It’s not a systems failure. We’re being intermittently field-drained,” he said dreamily. “We’re being forced down.”

Rowan gulped, concentrated, trying to keep the flyer level in the brief bursts of control. “My God, is it them again?”

“No. I don’t know … maybe they had some back-up.” With adrenalin and determination, he forced his wits to function through the sedative-haze. “Make a noise!” he said. “Make a splash!”

“What?”

She didn’t understand. She didn’t catch it. She should have— somebody should have—”Crash this sucker!” She didn’t obey.

“Are you crazy?” They lurched to ground right-side-up and intact in a barren valley, all snow and crackling scrub.

“Somebody wants to make a snatch. We’ve got to leave a mark, or we’ll just disappear off the map without a trace. No comm link,” he nodded toward the dead panel. “We have to make footprints, set fire to something, something!” He fought his seat straps for escape.

Too late. Four or five big men surrounded them in the gloom, stunners at ready. One reached up and unlatched his door, and dragged him out. “Be careful, don’t hurt him!” Rowan cried fearfully, and scrambled after. “He’s my patient!”

“We won’t, ma’am,” one of the big parka-clad men nodded politely, “but you mustn’t struggle.” Rowan stood still.

He stared around wildly. If he made a sprint for their van, could he—? His few steps forward were interrupted when one of the goons grabbed him by his shirt and hoisted him into the air. Pain shot through his scarred torso as the man twisted his hands behind his back. Something coldly metallic clicked around his wrists. They were not the same men who’d broken into the Durona Clinic, no resemblance in features, uniforms, or equipment.

Another big man crunched through the snow. He pushed back his hood, and shone a hand light upon the captives. He appeared about forty-standard, with a craggy face, olive brown skin, and dark hair stripped back in a simple knot. His eyes were bright and very alert. His black brows bent in puzzlement, as he stared at his prey.

“Open his shirt,” he told one of the guards.

The guard did so; the craggy man shone the hand-light on the spray of scars. His lips drew back in a white grin. Suddenly, he threw back his head and laughed out loud. The echoes of his voice lost themselves in the empty winter twilight. “Ry, you fool! I wonder how long it will take you to figure it out?”

“Baron Bharaputra,” Rowan said in a thin voice. She lifted her chin in a quick defiant jerk of greeting.

“Dr. Durona,” said Vasa Luigi in return, polite and amused. “Your patient, is he? Then you won’t refuse my invitation to join us. Please be our guest. You’ll make it quite the little family reunion.”

“What do you want from him? He has no memory.”

“The question is not what I want from him. The question is … what someone else may want from him. And what I may want from them. Ha! Even better!” He motioned to his men, and turned away. They chivvied their captives into the closed lift van.

One of the men split off to pilot the blue lightflyer. “Where should I leave this, sir?”

“Take it back to the city and park it on a side street. Anywhere. See you home.”

“Yes, sir.”

The van doors closed. The van lifted.